Colin McDowell hated Gatsby and isn't afraid to say it
Esteemed fashion journalist and author of many books on the subject Colin McDowell has done the esteemed and writerly equivalent of throwing his popcorn at the screen in a piece on the Business of Fashion today. He really hated Gatsby, and saw it as a synecdoche for the fashion industry broadly. In fact, his hatred of it served as a way into a rant that takes in everything from photographers, bloggers, journalists and designers. Don't hold back, Colin, tell us what you really feel!
'The Great Gatsby in Luhrmann’s version is a fashion story about greed and it entirely reflects the attitudes and beliefs of the high fashion world today.'
'The whole film is as vacuous as the pages of most fashion magazines. '
'[Fashion] is enjoyed by increasing numbers and there are more joining the queue, ready to pay very high prices for objects that are ultimately expendable, even after a very short life, because conspicuous consumption is the best game in town and, as it requires no skills, the excess it encourages is open to us all.'
'Why was actually showing the clothes in magazines in a way that they can be seen a technique relegated to the realm of more ‘wearable’ garments whilst the exciting and beautiful creations from the great designer houses have slowly become submerged in sexual and snobbish fantasy that has become increasingly perverse in the hands of some of our technically brilliant photographers?'
On fashion bloggers, McDowell says this: 'We are all aware that some fear that the barbarians are no longer at the gates, but in the citadel and often sitting in the front row. But should print journalists fret? This year’s barbarians are next year’s savants — in theory at least. If a designer feels that a fourteen-year-old is more likely to understand the show than a forty-year-old, he has a right to give the prime position to that person. And he could be right.'
And he also questions the habit, introduced first of all by Suzy Menkes, of quoting celebrities on the front row in show reports.
McDowell is a journalist of the highest order, and he raises questions in this piece that nobody else has yet thought to ask – certainly not so viscerally, at least.
